A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard



Compare Poets

Pick two poets who seem to have nothing to do with each other — a Gothic American and a pastoral Englishman, say — and see where the catalogue actually joins them: overlapping years, shared ground, distinctive themes, and the poems that secretly rhyme.

Poet A

William Thom William Thom

Poet B

James Thomson James Thomson
Compare two related contemporaries

A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.

Strongly related
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 74% Blended 74%
Swap sides Another related pair
William Thom

William Thom

c. December 1798 – 29 February 1848 (~50)
1 live poem · English

William Thom was born in Aberdeen, probably in December 1798, though sources have variously placed his birth in 1798, 1799, or 1800. The uncertainty is not trivial: it reflects the precarious position from which he emerged, a position in which the lives of poor urban families were not always recorded with the precision later granted to writers of standing. He came into the world in Sinclair’s Close, near the Justice…

“I always thought I could speak till now, but language fails me, and I can only say that I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

Neighbourhood: Romantic Poets, Scottish Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Longing, Wonder
James Thomson

James Thomson

23 November 1834 – 3 June 1882 (~48)
2 live poems · English

In the pantheon of Victorian poetry, few figures cast as long and dark a shadow as James Thomson, who wrote under the mysterious initials "B.V." Born on November 23, 1834, in Port Glasgow, Scotland, Thomson would become one of the most compelling and tragic voices of his generation, a poet whose work plumbed the depths of human despair while achieving moments of transcendent beauty. His life, marked by profound loss,…

“I know no subject more elevating, more amusing, more ready to awake the poetical enthusiasm, the philosophical reflection, and the moral sentiment than the works of Nature. Where can we meet with such variety, such beauty, such magnificence?”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Symbolist Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Irony

In time

William Thom
James Thomson
1798 1882
They overlapped for 15 years (1834–1848). When James Thomson was born, William Thom was about 36. James Thomson was about 14 when William Thom died.

On the map

About 209 km separate Aberdeen, Scotland from Port Glasgow, Scotland. Both have ground in Alba / Scotland.

Themes they return to

Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.

Shared

From the biographies

William Thom: aberdeen, dundee, the mitherless bairn, elspet davie, handloom weaving, scots vernacular, robert chambers, inverury poet. James Thomson: port glasgow, b.v., the city of dreadful night, charles bradlaugh, george meredith, the doom of a city, royal military academy, philosophical skepticism.

Poems that secretly rhyme

The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.

Second Love
William Thom
80% heart, life
Compare
The Fire That Filled My Heart of Old
James Thomson
Second Love
William Thom
67%
Compare
Virtue and Vice
James Thomson

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

William Thom: Tenderness, Longing, Wonder. James Thomson: Sorrow, Despair, Irony.

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